It would take ten seconds.Onekeystroke.
But I don’t move.
I just keep watching her — the calm, the discipline, the way she sits there like she’s waiting for the world to blink first.
Beautiful, I think, not as an indulgence but as a fact. The kind of beauty that lives in structure and control. The kind that survives fire.
The cursor on the monitor blinks once. Then I reach forward and mute the feed. The room goes utterly still.
She freezes on-screen — shoulders loose, jaw set, the faintest tremor of breath before the frame locks.
She’s not breaking.
She’sremembering.
And that’s worse than anything else she could be doing.
I lean back, eyes on her face in the pale glow of the monitor.
Vale asked if I’ll tell Caelum.
Maybe I should. But I don’t. Instead, I reach for the keyboard, highlight the last ten minutes of footage, and hit delete.
No record. No flag. No trace.
For a long moment, I just sit there in the dark, watching the empty feed.
“She’s playing a long game,” I whisper to no one.
And for reasons I can’t name, I hope shewinsit.
Chapter 12
Ember
Routine.
That’s the word for it, I suppose.
If you can call captivity a routine.
Three days. Maybe four. Maybe longer? Time’s started to blur inside these walls. London moves outside — car horns, rain, the low hum of life — but in here, the world folds down to the sound of footsteps, the clink of silverware, and the low murmur of men pretending not to watch me.
Every morning, breakfast like clockwork. Rook sits at the head of the table, immaculate as ever — suit pressed, sleeves rolled to his forearms, eyes like ice chips weighing every detail of my existence. He reads the paper while I pour coffee I didn’t make, asks me questions that sound harmless until I realize they’re traps. “How did you sleep?” becomes “What did you dream?” and suddenly I’m explaining more than I meant to.
He never corrects me when I call him Caelum now. He just smirks, like it’s a test I don’t realize I’ve already passed.
Mateo’s worse. He likes to hover.
If Rook studies me like a chess piece, Vale toys with me like a coin he can flip between his fingers. Every morning, he steals something from me — a mug, a spoon, a sip of my coffee — little thefts just to remind me he can. He makes lunch, too. Always insists. Sometimes he eats with me, sometimes he doesn’t.
The first time, he brought grilled cheese and tomato soup, smirking like it was a joke.
Now he makes things that taste like home, even though I don’t remember what home ever really tasted like.
He watches me eat. Never says much. Just studies my mouth when I bite into something, and smiles like he knows what that does to me.
Wraith is…different.
